Sawmills

Cross Referenced Case Studies:

>>Jon P Wagy Forest Products

Sawmills can be tooled to process hardwood (from mostly deciduous trees) or softwood (from mostly conifers) or both. These two categories of wood have distinct characteristics, product uses, and market cycles. They also require different drying or curing techniques and timelines.

Sawmills produce raw and/or finished lumber, and they may also invest in specialty machines to process their residual material into wood chips, wood pulp and/or sawdust. Some sawmills use residual material to fuel on-site heating systems to cure wood, or to fuel generators that make electricity, or both. See Infrastructure: Power Plants.

As a forest health management tool, forest stewardship projects are most cost-effective with close proximity sawmill infrastructure in place.  See also Forest Products: Fences,Stakes,Poles: Jon P Wagy and Forest Products: Urban Wood Waste: California Hardwood Producers

After first producing raw lumber, some sawmills also manufacture finished products. Whether or not sawmills are tooled to do this next step, proximity to manufacturing is important not only to controlling finished goods hard costs  it is important to the environment.  Transportation of raw lumber long distances to manufacturing facilities, and then transporting those finished goods back to an area where the lumber was milled burns twice the fossil fuel than would be necessary with manufacturing on-site or nearby. 

In the Northern Sierra, it is not uncommon to see transfer trucks with raw wood, finished lumber, and finished goods passing one another on windy mountain roads that were not designed for this heavy use, also adding to local government infrastructure maintenance and repair costs, and emitting diesel pollutants.  One project manager observed, "Jobs in harvesting natural resources are always the lowest paying. The money is made in manufacturing and sales of finished goods. When I see those trucks leaving, I realize that in only a few weeks, I'll be paying a premium for that same piece of wood when I have to repair my fence."   See also Infrastructure: Manufacturing